


In the Blood of It

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Fluff and Angst, M/M, werewolf related peril
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 20:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16333298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: It’s midnight. Renji has parked his truck on a lonely, lifeless stretch of highway where he can count the stars and the hours until dawn. The air is heavy and thick, with pale light bleeding through the clouds from a full moon.He doesn’t think of this as a favor he is doing for Shuuhei– this is something that they do together, as a team. Renji has more faith and affection for Shuuhei than may be strictly advised.He sits and waits for a canine howl to rip through the silence.





	In the Blood of It

The air is smokey. The sky is wet and heavy with the electricity, a storm is approaching in the fat, purple clouds that crawl overhead.

They are out in the country, and usually being this far away from the city gives Renji the opportunity to appreciate the stars. They shine wildly out here, popping out of the thick black sky like white winterberries. Not many things make Renji feel small, so he looks up into the endless swirl of space and time and nothingness. He feels a lurch in his gut like he’s being jettisoned out into the universe. He feels the way that a flea must feel when it is fished out from the thicket of hair and removed from the warm comfort of skin, writhing madly and unable to comprehend how truly weak and pointless it is before the tweezers squeeze it to pieces. Renji stares at the sky until he can’t stand it anymore and has to retreat inside to where he matters.

But tonight the clouds blot out the stars. Somehow that makes Renji even more anxious. The only thing he can see up there is the big, white eye of the full moon, looking bleary and sleepy through the coverage.

Usually on a night like tonight he would be sitting on the hood of the truck, smoking his monthly cigarette allowance and waiting for dawn to break. But something is a little off tonight. Maybe because it finally feels like fall, and mid-October always has them all a little more on edge than usual.

Maybe it’s because things are way too quiet. Renji is supposed to hear banging and rattling by now. He’s supposed to be kept awake all night by the sound of screaming. Instead, the silence lets his imagination run wild, and he doesn’t care for that shit one bit in his traitorous mind.

The cigarette’s shy light dye his fingers a dull orange, and Renji smothers the amber glow between his fingers. Everyone tells him to quit these things, and he is doing his best to oblige. Besides, he should keep his scent fresh. Maybe the familiar smell of him will help calm Shuuhei down.

In the passenger seat of the truck, Renji has a duffle bag with Shuuhei’s Morning Kit ready for him at the break of dawn. A fresh set of clothes. A baggie of Calor-E Buddy snack bars. A first-aid kit for emergencies. $200 in cash for the same reason. A small bottle of bleach and a mop. An air gun with some extremely illegal horse tranquilizers. It’s about 3 AM and their truck is parked way, way, way, way out in the desperate farmlands where no cop would ever think to drive by and pull them over, but Renji still sometimes has anxiety dreams of the police checking in on the truck cab, opening up the duffle bag, and that’s not even the worst part of that scenario.

Renji’s hand squeezes the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white. It’s fine. There hasn’t been a situation yet that they couldn’t think or fight their way out of. Just be smart, and you can protect everyone.

He takes the tranquilizer gun from the duffle bag, clears his mind until he can take one of the tranquilizer darts and load it into the barrel. Renji’s tattooed forearms look like writhing snakes under the cab’s overhead light, gooseflesh rising under the black, jagged bolts from the autumn chill.

Renji kills the lights and hops out of the driver’s side. On a good night, he doesn’t have to leave the truck at all, so he feels exposed the moment he sets foot outside.

The moving truck is a long, unwieldy thing. The size is so inconvenient and the roads even this far out of Kyoto are so narrow and winding that none of them like to drive it much at all, so it really only sees the road on these kinds of nights. Renji has been meaning to paint it some dark, inauspicious color so it won’t stand out like God’s lost tooth on the side of the road.

The hatch door sealed shut, of course. And there’s a thick rope of chains strung from one side to the other over the door, in the event that the inside emergency door lever should accidentally be pushed. Renji has the key to the padlock hanging around his wrist. When he jabs the key inside the padlock and twists, he thinks about how the chains fall heavily to the ground, rattling and groaning like a desecrated grave.

Stupid. Renji doesn’t believe in ghosts. He doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see with his own two eyes.

The inside of the cargo bed is almost pitch black. Of course it fucking is. Because it’s 3 AM and Renji forgot the flashlight in the cab. Stupid stupid dumb idiot dumb. He keeps the airgun at his hip as he peeks inside.

“Hey, Shuu,” He knows Shuuhei hates being called that cutesy epithet, so Renji uses it religiously whenever appropriate. He hopes it will garner a reaction like it usually does. “Shuuhei… you okay?”

The quiet is extremely disturbing. Normally, Shuuhei in this form only stays calm when he’s drugged. But they don’t drug him except in dire emergencies, since the side-effects keep him bedridden long after his transformation has de-escalated. Besides, they don’t want to accidentally boost his tolerance, and horse tranquilizers don’t exactly grow on trees.

Renji composes a mental map of how the two of them set the cargo bed up before Renji locked Shuuhei inside. In one corner they placed about 180 lbs of raw meat, tied up with string and paper in a neat little package to be torn apart. Pork is cheaper, but beef makes Shuuhei more sleepy. In the center, there should be blankets spread out, smelling stronging of sweat and that very distinct canine odor. Besides that are cardboard boxes, ropes, whatever they can find that Shuuhei might want to chew on or claw up or whatever it is that the beast inside him wants that will keep him at least a little bit busy.

The moment Renji opens up the door he is hit in the face with that stench. There’s no other way to describe it except as dog smell. He closes the door behind him before anything can slip by. “I’m comin’ in now so just… relax, okay? Everything is good.”

Stepping in to a dark closed space with wild, aggressive animal might seem idiotic. And it is. But the longer Renji is unsure, the more his imagination runs rampant. Shuuhei’s Other Side is unpredictable. A scared animal might get into a frenzy and hurt itself if left alone. Renji screws up his eyes and tries to scan the floor and wall for any blood.

Then, finally, he hears it. A low, rumbling, vibrating noise that seems to shake the entire cargo bed. In the wall of shadows, a single, enormous yellow eye focuses downwards onto Renji’s face.

If you have only seen a picture of a wolf and never seen one up close in real life, you probably expect them to be average dog size. Like, hip-height or so. But they are really, really so much bigger than that, so much that the human mind kind of defies the possibility that such a huge and powerful and dangerous animal could actually exist. That they can be such a daunting size and still move so quickly and so quietly is a powerful reminder of how limited human beings really are.

A werewolf at a height of his lunar cycle is so much more terrifying than an ordinary wolf. Shuuhei’s beast side dwarfs Renji, the sheer size of him swallowing up the narrow space, standing on his hind legs so his sharp, pointed ears brush against the roof of the truck.

His body is covered in coarse, black fur. He’s a wiry, long, bony thing, looking thin and nearly emaciated with the toll that transformation takes on the body. The metal floor of the carriage bed rings and shrieks as Shuuhei’s black, curled claws scrape against it. Straining his eyes against the dark, Renji can see the sweeping of a black tail, and the scrunched, severe snarl of a broad muzzle. There is the flash of pink gums and white teeth, and the singular yellow eye falling down like a spotlight.

Very few things make Renji feel small. This creature, which is both Shuuhei and yet also not, is one of those things. He is as dark and black and huge and terrifying as the stars.

Now, Renji isn’t someone who is easily cowed. When confronting a person, he has no problem squaring up. However, squaring up with a werewolf leads to consequences more predictable than the powerball.

“Hey, hey, now. Okay, we’re easy. Everything is alright, big guy.” Renji quells the panic inside him, tries to keep his voice low and soothing like a lullabye. He pins his eyes downwards, towards the beast’s huge feet, giving himself over to animal submissiveness. “Remember me, Shuuhei?”

The wolf creeps forwards, shockling elegant and graceful on such long, ungainly limbs. Renji inhales, trying to keep his eyes anywhere but Shuuhei’s eye; on the wall of the truck interior, on the swishing of the tufty tail, on the long, white teeth behind slick, black lips. Absolutely no eye-contact. In the canine world, only the boss gets to make that kind of bold gesture.  

A hot, wet, noisy breath curls against Renji’s neck like a wave of swampy summer fog, and he feels his throat tighten. Shuuhei’s maw is so large, he could crush Renji’s skull like an egg. A rumble echoes in Renji’s ear, angry and raspy. At this point, Renji realizes he is still holding the gun.

He stoops down and drops the gun at his feet, standing back up and opening his arms.“All good.”

Renji looks up again, and instantly he is struck by that one enormous eye peering directly at him. Shuuhei’s curled back arches above him, saliva dripping down the length of his open mouth.

Instinctively, Renji staggers backwards, trying to put some space between them. But his boots trip over one of the tattered blankets on the floor, and instantly he is on his back with the wind knocked out of him, belly up as the wolf drags itself closer.

It’s fine. It’s fine. Renji looks for ways to rationalize this. Shuuhei can claw him, crush him, as long as he doesn’t bite Renji and infect him, everything can be fixed.

As much as he tries to remain calm, Renji is unprepared for a cold, wet nose pressing against the hollow of his throat. A noise that is higher and whinier than Renji would love to admit squeaks out of his throat in surprise and fear.

Shuuhei snuffles noisily, sniffing down the length of Renji’s chest and belly. Relief floods Renji automatically, and slowly he wraps his arms around Shuuhei’s head, running his fingers through the thicket of fur behind his ears.

“There we go, yeah? Everything is okay.” Shuuhei seems to like it, his ears twitching.

He likes to think Shuuhei can recognize his smell, telling friend from foe. Or perhaps Renji owes his life to the fact that Shuuhei had almost eaten his weight in raw meat and was feeling placated. And that Shuuhei had eaten very well the previous morning, before his transformation.

It’s so strange, to compare this monster with the man inside of him. Every morning on the three nights of the full moon, Shuuhei makes himself an absolute buffet spread of a breakfast. Pancakes, bacon, toast, eggs, potatoes, yogurt with berries, oatmeal, cereal, ham with a side of chocolate chip Eggo waffles for dessert. He cooks enough for three people, and then eats all of it without a hint of pleasure. Just steely determination.

The closer that he gets to sundown, the more that Shuuhei’s mind becomes occupied with thoughts of eating. Not thoughts of food. Just eating.

After he gets a full whiff, Shuuhei stands back up. Renji sits back up and watches as Shuuhei stoops down at all fours and paces from one end of the truck bed to the other. It’s fascinating to watch the physicality of him, human and wolf anatomy competing for dominance. The high arch of his shoulder blades and the slope of his spine. He strides anxiously, and Renji’s chest is squeezed with sympathy.

Renji does wish, on some level, that he could just let Shuuhei go free. He isn’t evil, he’s just bored and dumb and irritated. If only he could just let the beast out to sniff and run to his heart’s content, let him roam free and be happy for once. The only thing that he wants and the one thing that Renji can’t allow him.

After reaching the end, Shuuhei paces back around. He looks exhausted, panting and groaning, with his long, sloppy pink tongue hanging out of it’s maw. That look isn’t actually from being tired, he’s just annoyed and anxious at being such a large creature in such a small space. No wonder Shuuhei is always so stressed out, no matter what shape he’s in.

Finally, after circling the back several times, the wolf collapses in a pile in front of Renji with a long, labored sigh into a pile of fur and limbs. He stretched out his paws, only one of which could stomp straight through Renji’s chest. Even curled up and flattened down, the creature is an intimidating force. His ears flatten against his skull in irritation.

“Yeah. I know.” Renji crosses his legs, and curls his back in on himself to make sure he looks smaller than ordinary. “I’m sorry, Shuuhei. You only got a few more hours, then you don’t have t’ do this for another 27 more days.”

Shuuhei grumbles in response, though Renji isn’t sure if it’s because he can understand or because his tummy is upset. The beast shifts, moving to place his enormous, heavy head against Renji’s chest. It’s certainly a passive-aggressive gesture, because it’s extremely uncomfortable for Renji. Saliva instantly runs down the front of Renji’s t-shirt, and he snorts. “Nice, dude.”

Renji’s fingers comb through the black fur. God, Shuuhei still reeks his musty animal smell, and there could not be a less comfy position to have this huge weight pressing down on Renji’s body. But this is far better than having teeth wrapped around his throat, so Renji appreciates that.

Besides, Shuuhei is impossibly warm. His body heat covers Renji entirely, chasing away the autumn chill by the point of his fangs.

Renji exhales. He knows this is hard for Shuuhei, even if Shuuhei doesn’t exactly know it right now. Nothing that they do can alleviate him from this curse, having to plan his entire life around three days a month. All that Renji can do is try to make things a little easier when he can.

Shuuhei’s bad eye is still just as torn up as the day he got the injury, the one thing that his monstrous healing factor couldn’t recreate was all the lost, tender tissue that was scooped out, as well as the mess of calloused scarred skin dragging down the side of his face. Renji could not quite clearly see it before in the dark, but now with him being practically nose-to-nose with the beast, he can see the wretched, fleshy pink of the one eye that is more dull than the other, that refuses to glow.

Tenderly, he puts his hand on Shuuhei’s muzzle and slides it upwards to brush the edge of the scar with his fingertips. Loudly, Shuuhei growls with disapproval. His ears flatten once more, his lips rise up over his teeth and his gums, all fangs, until Renji takes back his hand entirely and makes sure to obediently avert his eyes. Shuuhei huffs as turns the damaged side of his face away from Renji, so that his good eye can still shine in the dark. “Sorry.”

He knows better than to move now. Renji isn’t sure how he could fall asleep with the world’s most dangerous animal pinning him to the floor of a metal truck bed, but as the hours drain on it must have happened. Perhaps the rapid heartbeat pulsing from deep within Shuuhei’s chest lulled him into drowsiness.

 

* * *

 

Morning hits Renji right in the eye, a blinding streak of gold slipping through the only opening in the truck– the gap in the hatch door, which happens to fall right over Renji’s face.

What time is it? Jesus. Renji has never fallen on a full moon before. He has to be awake. He has to drive Shuuhei home so they can start doing damage control and get Shuuhei on his feet for next month.

Shuuhei. Renji notices the reduction in weight pressing against his torso. Morning comes. Night retreats. So does the Wolf.

Renji looks down at himself, past the dried saliva stain. And he has to stop himself from gasping at the downright angelic sight that greets him, an unconscious Shuuhei sleeping sweetly while cuddled up in Renji’s lap.

He’s outlike a rock, his cheek pressed into Renji’s thigh. Dark rings hang under Shuuhei’s eyes, and his hair is a mess. He absolutely reeks as well, a mix of a stench that is both human and animal. But he’s in one piece. He is his normal, human, real self again.

There’s something dark scattered across the truck bed’s floor. As the night turned to day, Shuuhei’s wolf fur died, stiffened and fell off like brittle pine needles, leaving him naked as the day he was born. It’s actually very beautiful, seeing him so vulnerable and soft now after the events of the previous evening. He’s curled up against the cold, his glowing golden limbs snuggled up as a shiver runs under his skin. Renji reaches over to grab the edge of one of the torn up blankets and pulls it over Shuuhei’s body.

This is nice. Renji’s fingers card through Shuuhei’s hair for a while, not unlike how he stroked the werewolf’s thick fur. A man. A wolf. A half-and-half stuck between. Shuuhei is two sides of one coin. He’s two halves of a whole. Maybe the human half wasn’t in control last night, but some part of Shuuhei in there knew enough to let Renji close anyways. A shade of gray appeared the two divides, and that’s rare and amazing.

Shuuhei has always preferred black and whites. Up and down, right and wrong. But Renji loves to deal in shades of gray, so he loves Shuuhei and all his problems.

 

Eventually, he has to wake Shuuhei up. Reluctantly, Renji squeezes the dark-haired man’s shoulder and shakes it just roughly enough. He clears his throat, sounding rather thick with sleep himself. The only talking he’s done in a while is cooing to the beast. “Shuuhei, wake up. You gotta put some pants on, my man, you’re gonna get sick like this.”

Shuuhei’s eyes peel open, half of a bleary, unfocused gaze looking into nothing. One gray eye slowly dilated into focus, and the other does not. Shuuhei rubs his cheek with his wrist, wiping off a trail of dry drool falling off his lip. “Mmm?”

It takes a moment more for Shuuhei to truly be awake, Renji helping him sit up and wrapping the blanket more securely around his shoulders. When the fog just begins to rise, then confusion and alarm take their place and the forefront of Shuuhei’s mind, he looks at the redhead from under pinched eyebrows.

“Renji, what are you doing back here–”

“Hold that. I’m gonna get your stuff, okay?”

Renji stands up. He wants to give Shuuhei the time to organize himself, get dressed and collect his dignity on his own terms, before he has the opportunity to parse the memories from his Other Self. For better or worse, he leaves Shuuhei in a pile of blankets in the truck bed so he can go around to the cab and get the duffle back from the passenger seat.

He hands off the clothes to Shuuhei, who staggers his way into jeans and a ratty hoodie. Renji can see by the glaze over Shuuhei’s eye, he’s still dazed and disoriented, trying to coax the memories of his monstrous side to the front of his human brain. Renji takes the bleach container and pours out a generous splash on the dark stain where the stinking red pile of red dog food used to sit. When they get back home, he’ll spray the whole place down proper. But for now, if they happen to get pulled over by the cops then at least they won’t get held on suspect for illegal animal trafficking. ‘No, Officer, we weren’t transporting any zoo animals, nor are we serial killers. All this blood and chains here? Well. Officer. How much do you know about BDSM? Who are you calling?’

Both of them get into the truck. Renji in the driver’s seat, and Shuuhei in the passenger seat with his Midnight Kit at his feet. The morning is so gorgeous, yellow sunlight pouring over the the flat plain of highway. In the furthest distance of his view from out the windshield, Renji can see the beginning of red and orange trees, like fireworks popping off over the horizon. The air smells clean and crisp. It’s beautiful. Renji starts the engine and begins to lumber the truck down the highway in silence.

Eventually, they begin to run into signs of civilization again. Renji counts highway signs as they roll by, and his eyes catch sight of a billboard for old fashioned diner pie. Renji’s whole body is sore, his stomach rolls. He absolutely aches for coffee.

“You wanna stop by for a bite?”

Shuuhei eye rolls around in his skull, finally landing to give Renji a look that’s just about half dead. His fist covers his jaw, leaning against the window.

“You’re still hungry, arentch’a?” Renji forces his eyes to stay on the road, not flickering to Shuuhei’s face. His fingers wrap around the wheel just as they did hours earlier, but at last all the tension is drained out of him. “We can just stop in for a few minutes. You can celebrate a job well-done, we’re off the hook for a month.”

Shuuhei’s voice, normally calm and even, sounds gritty and raspy. As if he had just finished gargling a glass full of rusty nails. “You can’t come near me when I’m transformed. You know better. He isn’t me. He’s not something you can trust not to turn on you.”

Renji doesn’t have the energy to be annoyed. If Shuuhei wants to get himself into a tizzy over this, that’s his own prerogative until Renji gets breakfast and a nap.

“Nothing happened, Shuuhei. I’m fine, okay? If I got bit, I wouldn’t be wasting time trying to hide it from you. I’d be hauling ass home right now to work on my own emergency wolf-out base.” Renji smiles sleepily and lazily.

“We can’t take risks with this kind of stuff, Renji. One wrong move and that’s it.” Shuuhei drags his knuckles over his lips, looking stony. “I don’t want you to die. And I don’t want to be the reason you die.”

There are a lot of ways to say ‘I love you.’ This way is not one of Renji’s favorites, but at least it’s one.

Renji resists the urge to wonder, for the thousandth time, were the line is between Shuuhei and the wolf. Did the Other Side’s decision to spare Renji come down to Shuuhei’s buried conscious, or some animal instinct deciding Renji was approachable, or was it a complete fluke? Not that it particularly matters.

No relationship is perfect. Love is not something that you have, it is something that you do. And love means maybe buying a moving truck to lug your werewolf boyfriend around every month. And just because said werewolf boyfriend doesn’t know for certain if he refrained from his killer instincts out of love, there’s not necessarily proof against it. For once, Renji is going to let himself believe that he knows better.

Renji pulls off of the highway, in the direction of the closest diner with the most hideous, goofy grinning mascot that he can find. “I’m gonna get an omlet. Definitely some pie.”

Shuuhei’s head ends up on Renji’s shoulder at some point, still reeking of animal musk, and it’s grossly, sweetly nostalgic. 


End file.
